Aqua Career

The earth’s ability to sustain life is in peril—as companies consume natural resources in ways that prevent ecosystems from regenerating our air, water, and food supplies. For example, clear-cutting forests for wood fiber damages forests’ ability to store water, provide animal habitats, and regulate climate.

Why such rampant exploitation? Unlike the value derived from consuming natural resources, the value of ecosystems’ most crucial services don’t appear on balance sheets. Yet that value is worth $33 trillion a year.

You can capture some of that $33 trillion and help restore the planet by practicing natural capitalism—conducting business profitably while also protecting natural resources. Some strategies suggested by Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins, and Paul Hawken: Adopt technologies that extend natural resources’ usefulness. Design production systems that eliminate costly waste. And reinvest in nature’s capital; for instance, by planting trees to offset power-plant carbon emissions.

Work with nature, and you boost profitability—pulling ahead of rivals who continue to work against nature.

The Idea in Practice
The authors recommend these steps to natural capitalism:

Increase Natural Resources’ Productivity
Develop dramatically more efficient production processes that stretch natural resources—energy, minerals, water, forests—5, 10, even 100 times further than they go today. You’ll ensure that these resources pay for themselves over time. And you may save on initial capital investments.

Example:
In its new Shanghai carpet factory, Interface redesigned their process for pumping liquids by using fatter-than-usual pipes, which created less friction than thin pipes do. The move cut power requirements by 92%. The new system also cost less to build, involved no new technology, and worked better than traditional systems in all respects.

Imitate Biological Production Models
In nature, nothing goes to waste. Ensure that every output of your manufacturing processes is composted into useful natural resources or recycled for further production. You’ll preserve ecosystems while eliminating the cost of waste disposal.

Example:
Interface invented a new floor-covering material, Solenium, which can be completely recycled into the identical floor product, reducing landfill waste. Solenium lasts four times longer and uses 40% less material than ordinary carpets. It’s toxin-free and stainproof, resists mildew growth, and is easily cleaned with water. Between 1994 and 1998, Interface’s revenues rose by $200 million. Of those revenues, $67 million has been attributed to the company’s decreased waste.

Change Your Business Model
Your customers don’t necessarily need to own your products. Often they merely need to be able to use them. Therefore, consider shifting your business model from selling products to providing services.

Example:
Interface realized clients want to walk on and look at carpets—not necessarily own them. So it transformed itself from a company that sells carpets into one that provides floor-covering services. It leases its service for a monthly fee, taking responsibility for keeping its carpets clean and replacing worn carpet tiles. This business model vastly reduces the amount of carpeting sent to landfills. And it improves customers’ productivity by eliminating the need to close offices and remove furniture to replace entire carpets.

Reinvest in Natural Capital
Reinvest in restoring, sustaining, and expanding your natural habitat and biological resource base. You’ll gain a public reputation for environmental responsibility—which translates into profitability.

Example:
Engineering company Living Technologies has developed a system that uses linked tanks of bacteria, algae, and plants to turn sewage into clean water. Its approach yields cleaner water at a reduced cost, with no toxicity or odor (making it compatible with the company’s residential neighborhood).

Purchase the full-length Harvard Business Review article.

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Most entrepreneurs want to make pots of money and run the show. But Wasserman reveals that it’s tough to do both. If you don’t figure out which matters most to you, you could end up being neither rich nor in control.

Consider: To make a lot of money from a new venture, you need financial resources to capitalize on the opportunities before you. That means attracting investors—which requires relinquishing control as you give away equity and as investors alter your board’s membership. To remain in charge of your business, you have to keep more equity. But that means fewer financial resources to fuel your venture.

So, you must choose between money and power. Begin by articulating your primary motivation for starting a business. Then understand the trade-offs associated with that goal. As your venture unfolds, you’ll make choices that support—rather than jeopardize—your dreams.

The Idea in Practice
At every step in their venture’s life, entrepreneurs face a choice between making money and controlling their businesses. And each choice comes with a trade-off.

If You Want to Get Rich
Startup founders who give up more equity to attract cofounders, key executives, and investors build more valuable companies than those who part with less equity. And the founder ends up with a more valuable slice of the pie.

On the other hand, to attract investors and executives, you have to cede control of most decision making. And once you’re no longer in control, your job as CEO is at risk. That’s because:

• You need broader skills—such as creating formal processes and developing specialized roles—to continue building your company than you did to start it. This stretches most founders’ abilities beyond their limits, and investors may force you to step down.
• Investors dole out money in stages. At each stage, they add their own people to your board, gradually threatening your control.

If you’re motivated more by wealth than power:

• Recognize when the top job has stretched beyond your capabilities, and hire a new CEO yourself.
• Work with your board to develop post-succession roles for yourself.
• Be open to pursuing ideas that require external financing.

If You Want to Run the Company
To retain control of your new business, you may need to bootstrap the venture—using your own capital instead of taking money from investors. You’ll have less financial fuel to increase your company’s value. But you’ll be able to continue running the company yourself.

If you’re more motivated by power than wealth:

• Restrict yourself to businesses where you already have the skills and contacts you need.
• Focus on a business in which large amounts of capital aren’t required to get your venture off the ground and flying.
• Consider waiting until late in your career before setting up shop for a new venture. That will give you time to develop the broader skills you’ll need as your business grows and to accumulate some savings for bootstrapping.

Purchase the full-length Harvard Business Review article.

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The threat of disruptive innovations is all too real. Witness Digital Equipment Corporation post the advent of personal computers, or U.S. automakers after Japan’s economic rise.

What is a disruptive innovation? A technology, product, or process that creeps up from below an existing business and threatens to displace it. Most disrupters initially offer lower performance, less functionality, and lower prices (think transistor radios) then gradually improve until they displace the incumbent.

A key challenge in dealing with disruptions is identifying them. Since most nascent technologies don’t become competitive threats, many companies understandably ignore them until they become obvious—when it’s too late to fight back.

But insurgents’ displacement of incumbents isn’t inevitable—especially if you detect and respond to potential disruptions early, using the new analytical tool presented in this HBR article. While not foretelling the future, the tool does harness your company’s collective wisdom and helps managers think systematically about potential threats. Its rigorous approach can spell the difference between flailing and prevailing in the face of danger.

If your firm is an incumbent, the tool can help you identify potential disrupters and either formulate preventive responses or turn them into new business opportunities. If you’re an insurgent, you can use it to plan—or conceal—an attack.

The tool benefits any company seeking to assess multiple investment opportunities and dedicate resources wisely.

The Idea in Practice

The Disruption Process
Disruptive innovations encroach on markets in a surprisingly predictable, six-stage process:

1. foothold market entry
2. main market entry
3. customer attraction
4. customer switching
5. incumbent retaliation
6. incumbent displacement

But disruptions can fail at any stage, so it’s well worth studying each stage carefully.

The tool helps managers collectively analyze how likely an innovation will move through each stage, and determine the appropriate actions—if any—to take.

Using the Tool
1.    Define. Identify and describe potential disruptions, including how far out (one year? three? five?) they might be.

2.    Enlist. Assemble a team comprising an executive champion; a process leader, a well-respected, visible individual (often from strategic planning) with some technical background, broad understanding of competitive dynamics and evolving customer needs, and strong facilitation skills; and 6–10 members from diverse perspectives—engineering, marketing, sales, new business development, and customer service, for example.

3.    Train. Familiarize the team with the tool by reviewing several retrospective disruptions and practicing with a live example from another industry.

4.    Tailor. The tool provides a list of factors that may contribute to the likelihood of the disruption succeeding at each stage. For example, contributing factors for Stage 1, foothold market entry, include:

• populations who previously lacked the skill or money to buy
• underserved segments
• low-end, previously unprofitable markets
• opportunity to market stripped-down products
• Customize the list of contributing factors for the specific disruption your team will be analyzing.

5.    Score. Score the innovation’s potential disruptiveness using the following steps. This process generates valuable discussion that exposes managers’ assumptions about industry conditions and dynamics.

a. Rate and weight the contributing factors within each stage of disruption:

• Each team member individually rates each contributing factor on a 7-point scale of disruptiveness. For example, answer the question “Can an insurgent gain a foothold in the market below our main one?” by rating each factor (see #4 above) from highly unlikely to disrupt (e.g., small underserved markets) to highly likely to disrupt (e.g., large underserved markets).
• Each team member now individually weights each factor based on its perceived level of influence.
• The team leader assesses the level of disagreement among members’ ratings and weights. This exposes lack of clear definition, differing assumptions, or insufficient information. Collect more information, when necessary, to make the process as fact-driven as possible.

b. Develop a majority or consensus for each factor’s ratings and weights.
c. Calculate the total score of each stage of disruption.

6.    Interpret. Create a disruptiveness profile by graphing the final scores for all six stages of disruption.

Then develop a response plan. Some profiles suggest immediate action. For example, if you’ve determined that many customers use little of your product’s functionality, consider offering a simpler product at a lower price.

Other disruptiveness profiles suggest different responses. For instance:

• No factors are judged as highly likely or highly unlikely to disrupt. In this gray area, disruption is possible but not assured. Your response? Initiate modest action. If the potential revenue displacement is low, monitoring the situation may be sufficient. If it’s high, consider investing in a preventive effort.

  For example, commission a more thorough analysis of the disruption, start an in-house development effort, or explore potential partnerships with emerging players that have a valuable technology or market position.

• Some or all factors are judged as highly likely to disrupt. You’ll, of course, need to take substantial action—especially if the innovation seriously threatens future revenues. This might take the form of an acquisition or the launch of a dedicated internal group with sufficient authority and resources to put the organization on the map quickly.

  Example:

  Determining that the low- and middle-market data-storage segments might experience rapid growth, EMC took aggressive action. It created a presence in the middle segment in 1999 by acquiring Data General’s midmarket storage business. In 2001, it formed an alliance with Dell to supply EMC’s Clarion systems to the small-enterprise market. Recently, it took the daring step of porting its coveted storage-management software to competitors’ hardware systems.

7.    Sell. Present the group’s suggested actions to senior managers and their constituent groups. The team and its executive sponsor may well need to serve as evangelists for the plan.

Purchase the full-length Harvard Business Review article.

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It’s lonely at the top. A C.E.O. has no true peers in whom he can unreservedly confide. He needs to hear hard truths, yet people become guarded in his presence and unwilling to raise difficult topics. No one needs a trusted professional adviser more than a C.E.O.

If you’re one of those advisers—a group that includes lawyers, investment bankers, public relations professionals, governance experts, business strategists, and specialty consultants—you may find operating so close to power intoxicating. But you’ll also face dilemmas that could derail your practice, your client C.E.O.’s career, or your client’s company.

For example, a successful advisory relationship with a C.E.O. requires a strong personal connection. But yearning to be friends can prevent you from demonstrating the candor and clear-eyed perspective the C.E.O. needs to make smart decisions. Your strategy? Balance personal bonds with boundaries. If you discover that your client shares your passion for, say, sailing, use brief chats about your common interest to forge a bond—but don’t go sailing together.

Recognize the pitfalls of your advisory role, and you stand a better chance of sidestepping them. Your reward? You enjoy the challenges and stimulation of the relationship—while providing invaluable assistance to corporate chiefs.

The Idea in Practice
Address these dilemmas while advising your C.E.O.:

Political Dilemmas

Emotional Dilemmas

Purchase the full-length Harvard Business Review article.

Job Vacancies :

Caprice Holdings is a multinational restaurant and hospitality group that is setting up four (4) new and exciting restaurants and bars that are opening soon at Rochester Park, Singapore.

We are now looking to recruit a fun & professional individual for the following position:

Kitchen Staff

# Must have the basic level of food knowledge.

# Previous working experience in a Western or French kitchen would be an added advantage.

# Preferrably Singapore Citzens/ PR.

# Qualified EP candidates are welcome to apply.

Service Staff

# Must have experience in F&B industry.

# Previous working experience at a fine dining restaurant would be an added advantage.

# Possess polite and courteous disposition.

# Preferrably Singapore Citzens/ PR.

# Qualified EP candidates are welcome to apply.

Company Driver

# Possess Class 3 driving licence.

# Preferrably Singapore Citzens/ PR.

# Qualified EP candidates are welcome to apply.

Those who are interested, kindly forward your application with full resume stating last drawn salary, salary expected & a recent photo to:
Email: yuensim.kwan@capriceholdings.net

We regret that only short listed candidates will be notified.